Percy Bysshe Shelley’s admon­it­ory son­net ‘Ozy­man­di­as’ was pub­lished in 1818, the same year as Mary Shelley’s pro­to­type sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el Franken­stein. Feel free to abide by the warn­ings of each, that if we over-reach ourselves we’ll be slapped down by the large, podgy hand of retri­bu­tion. But hav­ing just returned from a trip to the Suf­folk sea­side, via the dilap­id­a­tion and decay of London’s mag­ni­fi­cent Gun­ners­bury Park, I feel like cel­eb­rat­ing the beauty of the rus­ted sculp­ture, the decayed build­ing, the half-fin­ished paint­ing and the slightly wonky sand­wich.

Aldeburgh’s Mar­tello Tower, built to fend off coastal attack by Napo­leon, is a vast, dumpy affair, con­struc­ted of more than a mil­lion bricks and a huge dose of defi­ant chutzpah. The chilly waters of the North Sea crash onto the pebbles and stones of the beach below. The sculptor Sir Ant­ony Gorm­ley has just installed a suit­ably defi­ant cast iron man to sit atop the tower’s strident form, with the instruc­tion that it and its four sib­lings should be “cata­lysts for reflec­tion”. I can only think that if Mar­tello man had been around in Ozy­man­di­as’ day he would have told the ‘shattered vis­age’ and ‘trunk­less legs’ to pull them­selves togeth­er and stop being defeat­ist.

Just a mile along the Suf­folk coast­line, I mar­velled at Maggi Hambling’s vast sculp­ture Scal­lop, its frilled met­al edge punc­tured with words from Ben­jamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. As I stood on the beach, my first encounter with the words was like this:

“Voices that will be owned”? I don’t like the idea of that at all. But tramp a little fur­ther around the shell and the words are like this:

“I hear those voices that will not be drowned” — that’s more like it. I had driv­en to Alde­burgh via London’s Gun­ners­bury, pos­sibly the capital’s least cel­eb­rated but most start­ling orna­ment­al park. Its Pal­la­di­an build­ings are decayed, its orna­ment­al trees marooned and its veget­able garden merely cling­ing to its old form­al­ity. But the park’s Goth­ic grandeur has a mag­ni­fi­cent beauty that lifts the spir­its.

Neither Gun­ners­bury nor Alde­burgh are places for per­fectly con­struc­ted food, dainty sand­wiches or small mouth­fuls. You will, by now, know my love for pic­nics. To Gun­ners­bury and Alde­burgh I would take my wonky avo­cado sand­wich. In Alde­burgh, as the wild wind com­presses face to skull, I would tuck both a wonky sand­wich and a flask of hot mulled wine into my pocket. (If I could, I would also take a box of the most deli­cious gar­lic fries I’ve just been treated to in San Fran­cisco, at a Giants base­ball game — a card­board tray of plump chips scattered with enough shreds of snipped-up wild gar­lic leaves to fight off an attack by Ozy­man­di­as him­self.)

A DEFIANTWONKYSANDWICH

Slices of brown spelt bread, toasted — without ques­tion, this needs to be the kind of bread which goes into attri­tion­al battle with your teeth. You shouldn’t be quite sure who’s going to win until the end.

I very ripe avo­cado for each 2 slices of bread

Grated lem­on zest and a little juice

Hand­fuls of chopped lem­on ver­bena, chives, mint and oregano

Best olive oil

A few slices of chilli, if you feel like it

Trickle a little olive oil over the toast and mash the avo­cado roughly on top. Don’t scat­ter, so much as car­pet, the toast with the herbs, the lem­on zest and a little juice, plus the chilli if you’re using it. Wrap the sand­wich in a par­cel of sil­ver foil, and stick in your pock­et, along with a flask of mulled wine. Sit on the beach and, in the absence of a Gorm­ley iron man to look at, use the wonky sand­wich as a “cata­lyst for reflec­tion”. It should pro­duce thoughts which are benign at worst, soar­ingly jolly at best.

If You are con­cerned in pur­chas­ing medic­a­ments online, now may be the peri­od to do so. So the next mat­ter is where can you find inform­a­tion that is reli­able. You can get such inform­a­tion fast and con­veni­ently by going online. There are many ill­nesses such as schizo­phrenia which have no cure. One of the most pop­u­lar medi­cine is Via­gra. What about com­par­is­on between Cial­is versus Levitra and ? Nearly every adult knows about . Oth­er ques­tion we have to is . The symp­toms of sexu­al dis­orders in men include lack of sexu­al fantas­ies. Not­with­stand­ing sex is not vital for good hearti­ness, it’s cer­tainly good for any­one. So if you are exper­i­en­cing erectile prob­lems, it is essen­tial to see a cer­ti­fied doc­tor imme­di­ately for a com­plete medi­cin­al test­ing. Cer­tainly, online phar­macy can hands-down help you for solv­ing your all per­son­al dif­fi­culties.

Great to get anoth­er divert­ing post so soon after the for­tune cook­ies. This one some­how con­veys the affin­ity of the bleak­ness of the East Coast with the faded Goth­ic of Gun­ners­bury Park, not to men­tion Ozy­man­di­as. A sol­id sand­wich made with won­der­ful spelt flour would be a com­fort. I make spelt bread with the glu­ten-free pro­gramme (spelt has little glu­ten) on my Panason­ic bread maker and I highly recom­mend it. It only takes 2 hours which is an added bonus.

I’m not very keen on man­i­cured ones with ging­ham table­cloths — I’m more a sand­wich and flask in the pock­et kind of pic­nic-er. And they’re so much easi­er to pre­pare and there­fore are more likely to hap­pen!